[tex-live] Serious (?) problem with Babel and language attributes

Norbert Preining preining at logic.at
Mon Jun 2 02:54:59 CEST 2014


Hi everyone,

I don't know *when* this mess started, but it seems that
the other language attributes are also broken.

And it seems the bug is not in the ldf files, but in the babel *core*.

But at least I have to say, they are broken since long, because
I tried below test case also in Debian/TeX Live 2012 (!) with
the same outcome.

$ cat test.tex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[latin]{babel}
\languageattribute{latin}{medieval}
\begin{document}
\november
\end{document}
$

This document *should* produce
	Nouembris
if I am right ... the code in latin.ldf:
\bbl at declare@ttribute{latin}{medieval}{%
  \addto\captionslatin{\def\prefacename{Pr{\ae}fatio}}%
  \def\november{Nouembris}%
  \expandafter\addto\expandafter\extraslatin
  \expandafter{\extrasmedievallatin}%
  }

But what comes out is
	Novembris
???

I copied latin.ldf to the local dir, and added a \message which resulted
in:
$ pdflatex latintest.tex 
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.15 (TeX Live 2014) (preloaded format=pdflatex)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./latintest.tex
LaTeX2e <2014/05/01>
Babel <3.9k> and hyphenation patterns for 78 languages loaded.
(/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
(/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
(/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty (./latin.ldf
(/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/generic/babel/babel.def)))
HELLO activated medieval (./latintest.aux) [1{/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-var/f
onts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./latintest.aux) )</home/norbert/tl/2014/t
exmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmr10.pfb>
Output written on latintest.pdf (1 page, 12311 bytes).
Transcript written on latintest.log.
$

So it seems that the babel core executes some more init stuff at
begin document, which overrides the attribute settings.

As said, same on TL2012, 2013, 2014 ... uahhh


I don't know how to test the other attributes, but grepping for
	declare at ttribute
on all the babel files gives me quite some:
babel/babel.def:\def\bbl at declare@ttribute#1#2#3{%
babel-bulgarian/bulgarian.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{bulgarian}{abvoff}{%
babel-czech/czech.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{czech}{split}{%
babel-estonian/estonian.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{estonian}{notilde}{\addto\extrasestonian{\bbl at deactivate{~}}}
babel-greek/greek.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{greek}{polutoniko}{%
babel-kurmanji/kurmanji.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{kurmanji}{<attrib>}{%
babel-latin/latin.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{latin}{medieval}{%
babel-latin/latin.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{latin}{withprosodicmarks}{%
babel-russian/russianb.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{russian}{ancient}{%
babel-slovak/slovak.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{slovak}{split}{%

That does not look very promising :-(

Norbert

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PREINING, Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0  ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
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